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I don't have a huge breadth of experience in the arena, but I play a decent amount of the Frozen match 3 (and it's predecessor). I think Russ's studio did those? Anyhow, I like the power ups they use and the methodology for earning them. As for collapsing... the lack of a firm grid certainly makes it a tough problem, though I don't understand the data structure issue. The distance based approach sounds novel, however... seems like any solution should leverage that rather than fight it. Could be a differentiating feature.

I'll give it some deeper thought and get back to ya!

Played it on PC now! I was confused about how it worked before, I see now the match happens on mouse up if you have a match highlighted? Something like that. It felt nice.

One thing I'm noticing is an urge to "game" the "rules" I randomly assigned the level. Like I want to intentionally line up zigzag shaped lines that combines matches from multiple columns at once. It's tricky though, and the time pressure made me decide to give up that tactic, no matter how tempting.

Another thing I noticed more on the second play was the lack of plan-ability when matching, so to speak. Any match you make is simply replaced with new circles, so at most you can hope to get lucky (an important puzzle game feature!) instead of the long term manipulation of the board of matching these to move those. You have planning ability with moving the board itself and it's interesting to try and perceive all the different ways to manipulate it, so maybe a non-issue. But I can't help but think it might be improved slightly if there was some kind of predictable consequence for each match. Like the pieces moving inward each match, or the circle collapsing on itself where the missing spots are (where would new pieces come from? I dunno!) - you could even get experimental and away from the norm with spawning pieces based on the matched pieces. Like a Blue match always spawns 50% red, 25% orange, 10% yellow, etc... still a bit random, but predictable enough to make hoping for luck a more active experience... maybe?

...sorry to ramble. Still fun to play!

Love the concept, it's a cool take on match 3. Played it on my phone, so not the best experience. Wish it would at least go wide screen when I rotate my phone, when it's tiny like that it's a little tough to have precision. 

Effects are nice, I think you could reinforce the scoring a bit if you had the effect go towards the center only on a correct match. Since my screen was tiny, I didn't notice the score wasn't increasing at first on bad matches, eventually figured it out when I noticed sometimes it auto matched. 

Anyhow, great core, could see it evolving into something incredible! 

Sounds exciting - started following you on here so maybe I won't miss the next big thing! Good luck!

Just saw this on your twitter bio, decided to try it out.

I love the concept, but had to put the pause at max to make any headway. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this game...

At first I expected to be able to target the rice baskets, but that didn't seem to work. I found actually moving through jumps / WASD kind of distracting... I just wanted to click slash anything and everything. Had a lot of trouble even making it to the platforms intentionally, even with the 1s timer.

I also wasn't sure what the difference was between horizontal and vertical slices, if there is one. 

Not sure you're still working on this, but here's a couple of quick thoughts:

* Add a "Dog Ninja" mode with infinite pause

* Allow Lanterns to respawn over time (I ran out of the high lanterns)

* Make Lanterns more visible from the bottom / top (if them being hard to see wasn't intentional)

* Consider Targets that REQUIRE Vertical / Horizontal slices (wrong attack = health loss? temp loss of control?)

* Consider "Bonus" objects that go into a Fist of the North Star / Fruit Ninja button mash mode when hit and award points based on the number of slashes done during a time period

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point. I think it's cool though and has tons of potential! Could go any direction with it, really.